The Midnight Meat Train (2008)

To end my favorite month, with my favorite holiday, is The Midnight Meat Train. The movie was awesome. Another movie were I couldn't predict the ending! I love indie flicks! I found the plot summary for the movie on IMDb:

The film opens as a well dressed, barrel chested man stalks the late-night passengers of a subway train. He assaults and kills several people with a meat hammer, and a butcher's hook. He dispatches his prey wordlessly, and with an uncannily unnatural strength. He wears a ring on his finger, adorned with eight stars.

We are then introduced to Leon, a vegan photographer who heads into the city's subway system at night to take photographs. He is criticized constantly by other photographers for fleeing danger before shooting a full reel. One night, in a decision to break this trend, he saves a woman from a gang that is abusing her. The next day, he discovers this girl has gone missing. Leon is intrigued by the mystery, and begins to investigate newsreels about similar disappearances. His investigation leads him to a butcher named Mahogany, who he suspects has been killing subway passengers for as long as a hundred years.

Leon attempts to turn some of the photos he has taken of Mahogany in to the police, but they refuse to believe him, and instead cast suspicion on his own motives in photographing the victims. Leon's involvement quickly turns into a dark obsession, upsetting his waitress girlfriend Maya, who is as disbelieving of his story as the police chief. Leon takes matters into his own hands, entering the subway train at midnight, only to witness a shocking bloodbath, as the butcher kills several passengers, then hangs them on meat hooks. Passing out on the subway floor, he awakes the next morning in a slaughterhouse with strange markings carved into his chest.

A concerned Maya and her friend Jurgis, a short-order cook, begin to examine the photos Leon has been taking of Mahogany, leading them to the killer's apartment. After breaking and entering the butcher's home, Jurgis is captured, and brutally killed. Maya goes to the police, But finds that they are as unwilling to consider her story, as they were of Leon's. It is at this point that we begin to discover that the police may be involved in the cover-up of Mahogany's crimes. A police official directs the misguided Maya to a trip on the midnight train. Leon, unaware of Maya's involvement, finally decides to put an end to the butcher's crimes, and heads to the hidden subway entrance in the slaughterhouse, arming himself with the a butcher's apron, and several slaughterhouse knives.

Leon enters the train as Mahogany has completed his nightly massacre, and has cornered a helpless Maya. Leon attacks the murderer with a knife, beginning a climactic battle between the photographer and the superhuman butcher. They fight in between the swinging human meat, Leon's knives against Mahogany's meat hammer, and human body parts are ripped, thrown, and used as weapons in the shower of epic gore. Finally, Mahogany is thrown out of the train by Leon, but not long before it hits its final stop. The train has entered an underground cavern, filled with skulls and decomposing bodies.

Mahogany, in a battered and bleeding state, returns, barely alive, from beneath the train, and engages in a death struggle with Leon, who finishes the job at last by impaling the psychotic butcher's skull on a blade. Mahogany grins in his dying throes, pronouncing the single word "Welcome!"

With the butcher's death, the conductor of the train enters the car, advising Leon and Maya to "Please step away from the meat." With these words, the true purpose of the underground station is revealed, as horrible reptilian creatures enter the car, consuming the meat to which they have been delivered. The conductor explains to Leon that the creatures have always existed below the city, and that the butcher's job was to keep them satisfied by feeding them every night. The conductor then forces Leon to watch as he kills Maya with one of the butcher's knives. When he is done, he picks up Leon, and with the same supernatural strength as the deceased butcher, rips out Leon's tongue, throwing him to the ground. He tells Leon that, having killed the butcher, he must take his place.

In the final scene, the police chief hands the train schedule to the new butcher, who wears a ring with eight stars. The killer walks onto the midnight train, and turns his head to reveal that he is Leon, ready to go on his nightly slaughter.

The movie starts out with a guy on a train by himself, slowly falling asleep. And then boom! He falls into a puddle of blood. This is how "The Midnight Meat Train" starts out. It's kind of like a roller coaster ride. Action and suspense, then smoothness.  The visual graphics are great. Very up close and personal with the killings. In one scene, you can actually see a mans eye being knocked out of his scull in slow motion. They also have a shot were you can see through the eyes of the person being killed. This can kind of give you an idea of  what the person sees and feels. They also did an awesome job in showing the fight scene with a 360 degree shoot. Going around in circles showing each angle and each action that is taking place in that camera shot. And the way the movie ended was awesome and weird. The music was erie but went well with the movie.

The killer is a bit of a creeper. He goes to work everyday in a suite... and he's a butcher. He never talks through the entire movie, until the end when he says "Welcome"(creepy indeed). He just give you these looks that sends chills up your spine. Everynight around midnight, he boards a special train(the conductor is in on it). When the train is in motion, whatever person is in the car with him will be killed. Doesn't matter if it's one or three; there dead. He approuches each new victim with a meat hammer and aims for the facial area. One to two blows will kill the person. With this killer, he's really scary. He creeps up behind you. And the scary part is that you don't even have to turn around to know that he's there.

You have the typical girlfriend who helps out her boyfriend/husband acheive his dream, but then regrets doing so because the boyfriend/husband becomes obsessed with the dream; or something related to the dream. And of course she falls when she is running away from the killer. *sigh* God I hate when they do that. It makes them seem so helpless when there not. She misses when she has a point blank shot. How do you do that? Instead of trying to get away when the killer has her, she just stares at him and scream "Nooooo!" And hold out her hands as if that was going to stop him.

You have the typical boyfriend/husband who becomes so obsessed with his work that he doesn't know how fucked he is until it's to late. Then he follows the creeper like a weirdo and wonder why he wanted to kill him. Then he went head to head with the killer; him holding a cutting knife and the killer holding his meat hammer like actual was going to win that fight.

Great movie, although it does kind of leave you a little confused; because it doesn't really tell you why the monsters are underground. But otherwise, good movie. 

Found the whole movie for those who want to watch: